Full credit to DDHv, for pushing on regardless of how often his theories are knocked down. To me the arguments are reminiscent of the computer adage GI GO. He takes an illogical assumption then uses impressive intellectual skills to try and prove it. Hopeless task but kudos for trying.A real world example is the SUV, an excellent answer to an illogical question. Take a well engineered sedan or hatch, make it fatter and heavier, with a higher centre of gravity, all to no purpose as it still is useless off road, then try to make its dynamics as good as the original.

The E wrote:Oh, and one other thing: If it turned out that Abiogenesis is in fact impossible to prove, I would have no problem accepting a different theory.But what if it turns out Abiogenesis truly is reproducible: Would you change your tune? Or would you continue to insist that it's all way to improbable to ever have happened in the real world?

Side note.... the odds abiogenesis is irreproducible in the lab have shrunk quite near to zero these days...

John D. Sutherland, “Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning,” Nature Reviews Chemistry, Vol. 1:12 (2017) assumes a naturalistic origin for life, and discusses work done on this basis. He puts forth work that includes multiple accurate intelligent intervention, but assumes that this is evidence for origin of life without such intervention.

Aside from the fact that Sutherland’s model refutes the ever-popular “hydrothermal vent” hypothesis for the origin of life, don’t miss the last sentence where he commits the “burden of proof” logical fallacy. This basically says that if you view his scenario as “unacceptable” then you can’t dismiss it unless you can produce a scenario that’s better or “equally productive.” This is obviously fallacious: the merits of his hypothesis do not fall or rise on the ability of a given critic to provide a more “productive” explanation. After all, what if the entire project — the attempt to produce biomolecules in the absence of living organisms under natural earthlike conditions — is impossible? If that’s the case, then all explanations of prebiotic synthesis are ultimately doomed to fail, including our “best” attempts. Perhaps the fact that he ends on this note hints that he knows his case isn’t really all that strong.

Here's the thing though: Even if abiogenesis turns out to be not reproducible in a lab, it doesn't mean that your god is the origin of life, or that "intelligent design" was involved in it. ID offers one alternative explanation (even if it is completely unscientific and not supported by what we do know), but it's not the only one.

Please list others not involving intelligence directly or indirectly.

Dismissal of ID work on the basis of the "burden of proof" logical fallacy ignores the use of probability assessment of evidence against or for a given idea. Many people are like those who dismiss the idea that the Bible can have accurate prophecies by ignoring the existence of Israel, without even being able to name one other people who have been exiles from their homeland for many generations but have returned to it.

The bible mixes apocryphal history, moral fables and outright fiction liberally throughout. That you're able to prove that some things in it actually happened through outside sources doesn't mean that the rest of it is any more true.

snip

From: The quest for cosmic justice, by Thomas Sowell.

The arrogant vision of an anointed elite comes not from the simple fact that it is a vision, but from the sense of themselves as morally anointed among those who hold this particular vision. That vision makes that particular belief possible and therefore becomes a vision which its devotees are loath to relinquish, even in the face of evidence against the views that sustain their exaltation. Desperately ingenious efforts to evade particular evidence, or to denigrate objective facts in general, are all consistent with their heavily emotional investment in their vision, which is ostensibly about the well-being of others but is ultimately about themselves.

I point out that the work of Sutherland and others requires the input of much intelligence even in the laboratory. There is no attempt to provide evidence that it is at all probable to get even these comparatively simple OOL results outside the lab without the input of intelligence.

I note that Israel exists, as predicted in the Bible. No attempt is made to provide any counter example of another people who have been exiled from their homeland for even five generations, and have returned to it. Instead a statement, "The bible mixes apocryphal history, moral fables and outright fiction liberally throughout." is given without supporting details.

The Bible also predicts a time of trouble so great that if God didn't limit it, no flesh would be alive. Weapons capable of doing this were produced only during and after WWII. It predicts an economy in which no one can buy or sell without the symbol of the dictator on their body. The computers able to enforce this have only been developed during and after WWII. It predicts a situation in which people worldwide are able to view a particular event. The development of television and world wide connections is also historically recent. It predicts an army of two hundred million killing a large fraction of Earth's population at a time when the world's population was of that order of magnitude.

It also makes sense to watch the trends of evidence. I once read something from the 1800s which listed a hundred places they thought the Bible was inaccurate. Over ninety of those have been shown wrong, and the rest are still being researched.

It used to be thought that protoplasm was simple. Our present evidence otherwise: In addition to DNA coding for the production of varied RNA strands, recent years have turned up the splicing code, epigenetics, the histone code, inbuilt DNA repair, and transcription factories.

Here's the thing though: Even if abiogenesis turns out to be not reproducible in a lab, it doesn't mean that your god is the origin of life, or that "intelligent design" was involved in it. ID offers one alternative explanation (even if it is completely unscientific and not supported by what we do know), but it's not the only one.

Please list others not involving intelligence directly or indirectly.

Dismissal of ID work on the basis of the "burden of proof" logical fallacy ignores the use of probability assessment of evidence against or for a given idea.

Are you simply incapable of learning?

ID has no proposed mechanisms for how it occurred whatsoever. None. HOW THE HELL do you perform a probability assessment of the odds of a totally undefined event happening?

As has been pointed out to you before, no matter how long you might think the odds of evolution are, the comparison is still "improbable event based on real natural phenonena" vs "nothing whatsoever beyond vague handwaving". Evolution wins.

DDHv wrote:He puts forth work that includes multiple accurate intelligent intervention, but assumes that this is evidence for origin of life without such intervention.

Congratulations on you and other ID-people for noticing that that paper was flawed. As have a number of other Origin-of-life researchers.

Finding flaws in a flawed paper doesn't invalidate the entire theory.

The article you cite gives ID-tainted takedowns of the results, when it is quite clear that under traditional interpretations the results are invalid as well. This is not an affirmation of ID.

ID still remains to be an unscientific approach; If you posit that intelligence has intervened in the formation of life, you also need to explain the mechanisms by which that happened.

Again: Saying "God did it" is a fundamentally unscientific position. At that point, you might as well abandon science entirely, as there is no new knowledge to be found anywhere.

Dismissal of ID work on the basis of the "burden of proof" logical fallacy ignores the use of probability assessment of evidence against or for a given idea. Many people are like those who dismiss the idea that the Bible can have accurate prophecies by ignoring the existence of Israel, without even being able to name one other people who have been exiles from their homeland for many generations but have returned to it.

ID does nothing to establish that its primary assumption is true. You point to the bible and say "this is true", and go from there; Since we know how the bible was created (by human writers and editors over multiple centuries, cultures and languages), the assertion that it contains complete truth doesn't hold water. You can claim divine inspiration all day long, but until you can show divine inspiration actually happening under scientific conditions, you're not basing your assumptions on facts.

The bible, at its best, is a stopped clock when it comes to prophecies and its declarations of what physical reality is. If you find something true in it, it's happenstance, not proof that the rest of the text is true as well.

From: The quest for cosmic justice, by Thomas Sowell.

The arrogant vision of an anointed elite comes not from the simple fact that it is a vision, but from the sense of themselves as morally anointed among those who hold this particular vision. That vision makes that particular belief possible and therefore becomes a vision which its devotees are loath to relinquish, even in the face of evidence against the views that sustain their exaltation. Desperately ingenious efforts to evade particular evidence, or to denigrate objective facts in general, are all consistent with their heavily emotional investment in their vision, which is ostensibly about the well-being of others but is ultimately about themselves.

You are aware, I hope, that that passage applies to you just as well. ID proponents are past masters at "Desperately ingenious efforts to evade particular evidence, or to denigrate objective facts in general, are all consistent with their heavily emotional investment in their vision".

I point out that the work of Sutherland and others requires the input of much intelligence even in the laboratory. There is no attempt to provide evidence that it is at all probable to get even these comparatively simple OOL results outside the lab without the input of intelligence.

So the lab experiments are set up to recreate conditions that we believe obtained during Earth's planetary evolution. If these experiments produce negative results, you are vindicated because obviously abiogenesis is hogwash. If they produce positive results, you are vindicated because obviously this means that such conditions could never exist in reality (after all, this was just a lab experiment).

Are you even aware of how willing to dismiss experimental evidence that doesn't agree with your pet theories you are?

I note that Israel exists, as predicted in the Bible. No attempt is made to provide any counter example of another people who have been exiled from their homeland for even five generations, and have returned to it. Instead a statement, "The bible mixes apocryphal history, moral fables and outright fiction liberally throughout." is given without supporting details.

The bible is a stopped clock. Its various predictions have been mapped by true believers onto any number of real-world events, which has always resulted in failure to make subsequent predictions work.

The Bible also predicts a time of trouble so great that if God didn't limit it, no flesh would be alive.

Please show positive proof of god intervening to prevent major wars.

Weapons capable of doing this were produced only during and after WWII.

You know, "flesh" can stand for many things in that passage, depending on translation.

It predicts an economy in which no one can buy or sell without the symbol of the dictator on their body. The computers able to enforce this have only been developed during and after WWII.

I don't know, all that passage talks about is a mark "on their right hand or on their forehead"; this is pretty doable even with stone age tech. Like, there's no real room for interpretation there.

It predicts a situation in which people worldwide are able to view a particular event. The development of television and world wide connections is also historically recent. It predicts an army of two hundred million killing a large fraction of Earth's population at a time when the world's population was of that order of magnitude.

And?

It also makes sense to watch the trends of evidence. I once read something from the 1800s which listed a hundred places they thought the Bible was inaccurate. Over ninety of those have been shown wrong, and the rest are still being researched.

And once more for good measure: The bible is a stopped clock. You can point to any number of things it wrote down correctly, and it still won't make "God exists" any more provable.

It used to be thought that protoplasm was simple. Our present evidence otherwise: In addition to DNA coding for the production of varied RNA strands, recent years have turned up the splicing code, epigenetics, the histone code, inbuilt DNA repair, and transcription factories.

Some simplicity

Still simpler than "There is a god who is exactly as the bible describes him and who caused everything to exist yet is completely indetectable by human senses and instruments".

geomeau wrote:ID still remains to be an unscientific approach; If you posit that intelligence has intervened in the formation of life, you also need to explain the mechanisms by which that happened.

We have known gravity exists for a long time. Do we know the mechanism for it, and how that mechanism came to exist?

People talk about the laws of physics producing the universe. The laws of physics are mathematical descriptions of how matter and energy behave in space and time. Can a description do anything? The descriptions we have can only be meaningful in a universe which already exists; with space, matter/energy, and time.

ID proponents state that we do not know of any source of functional information except intelligence. Therefore, chance and time are not good inferences for our universe.

ID opponents state that the universe and its contents come from time and chance.

Do we have laws of physics that work, or a chaotic universe in which we cannot predict what will happen next?

geomeau wrote:ID still remains to be an unscientific approach; If you posit that intelligence has intervened in the formation of life, you also need to explain the mechanisms by which that happened.

We have known gravity exists for a long time. Do we know the mechanism for it, and how that mechanism came to exist?

We have theories. And observations and experiments to confirm, deny and refine those theories.

Guess what ID doesn't have. ID has always been and likely will always be a hypothesis that accepts all the outcomes of evolution without a testable theory as to how these outcomes came to be.

People talk about the laws of physics producing the universe. The laws of physics are mathematical descriptions of how matter and energy behave in space and time. Can a description do anything? The descriptions we have can only be meaningful in a universe which already exists; with space, matter/energy, and time.

These descriptions let us predict the outcomes of experiments and observations, they let us find better descriptions that more closely approximate the underlying mechanics of the universe. Evolution lets us predict changes in a species over time. ID, on the other hand, when asked for predictions, throws its metaphysical hands in the air and screams "God did it! I don't know why or how, but God definitely did it, and I neither can nor will second-guess any of God's doing".

ID proponents state that we do not know of any source of functional information except intelligence. Therefore, chance and time are not good inferences for our universe.

Right then. Where did intelligence come from? What's the prima causa (Ref: Thomas Aquinas' Natural Theology)? If intelligence is complex, and complexity cannot arise by chance, where did intelligence come from?

Also, and I once more have to repeat this because apparently it hasn't entered your skull yet: We have ample evidence that chance and time (as moderated by the mechanisms of evolution) can produce astonishing complexity; this article describes one such experiment (TL;DR: A researcher used a genetic algorithm to configure an FPGA over multiple generations until it reached a specified goal, in this case the ability to distinguish between two audio waveforms. When said researcher later analyzed the resulting design, he found that it followed none of the rules a human designer would've; furthermore, when he tried to transplant that design onto a different FPGA or even a different region of the FPGA he had been using, it stopped working. Apparently, what happened was that over the generations, the winning designs started to utilize small imperfections in the FPGA to optimize themselves).

ID opponents state that the universe and its contents come from time and chance.

And so far, we're the only ones who have actual experimental and observational evidence for our claims.

Do we have laws of physics that work, or a chaotic universe in which we cannot predict what will happen next?

Wow, you are astonishingly bad at rhetoric. So according to you, the existence of highly chaotic systems like the weather means that physics doesn't work?

DDHv wrote:I note that Israel exists, as predicted in the Bible. No attempt is made to provide any counter example of another people who have been exiled from their homeland for even five generations, and have returned to it.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Early Zionists like Theodore Herzl came to believe that European Anti-Semitism could not be changed, and that the only way for Jews to live free was in a country of their own. His argument was based on political observation, not prophecy, but the biblical prophecy was adopted by the Zionists to give justification and a divine imprimatur to their cause.

The creation of modern Israel as a nation was a result of European countries looking for a place to dump the "Jewish Problem". Zionists such as Chaim Weizmann lobbied for a Jewish homeland. He wanted Argentina, Lord Balfour offered Uganda, but eventually the League of Nations, cavalierly disposing of lands occupied by "lesser breeds without the law", handed the Jewish people a chunk of land sized from the Ottoman Empire after WW I, the "British Mandate of Palestine" that is now the nation of Israel.

As happens so often, biblical sources were quoted in support of a political goal.

DDHv wrote:I note that Israel exists, as predicted in the Bible. No attempt is made to provide any counter example of another people who have been exiled from their homeland for even five generations, and have returned to it.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Early Zionists like Theodore Herzl came to believe that European Anti-Semitism could not be changed, and that the only way for Jews to live free was in a country of their own. His argument was based on political observation, not prophecy, but the biblical prophecy was adopted by the Zionists to give justification and a divine imprimatur to their cause.

The creation of modern Israel as a nation was a result of European countries looking for a place to dump the "Jewish Problem". Zionists such as Chaim Weizmann lobbied for a Jewish homeland. He wanted Argentina, Lord Balfour offered Uganda, but eventually the League of Nations, cavalierly disposing of lands occupied by "lesser breeds without the law", handed the Jewish people a chunk of land sized from the Ottoman Empire after WW I, the "British Mandate of Palestine" that is now the nation of Israel.

As happens so often, biblical sources were quoted in support of a political goal.

You are not naming one other people who still existed as a people after multiple generations out of their homeland. The usual pattern is assimilation into other peoples. The improbable fact is the Jews continuing as a people: their becoming a nation again, as is also prophesied in the Bible, is just the capstone.

The biblical viewpoint can be seen by examining the use of the hebrew word bara in Genesis 1:1>2:4. This word, used in its primitive form only for God's acting, speaks of God creating the material universe: Gen. 1:1; the active universe: Gen. 1:21; and the thinking universe: Gen. 1:27. Today we have matter-ists who work from the meta-physical foundational idea that matter is the first cause; anim-ists whose idea is that everything is alive in some way; and mind-ists who insist that all is mind, and what we think we experience is delusion, a dream of the universal mind. Each of these elevates a fraction of the creation to take the place of the Creator.

An example of how the metaphysical assumption affects theories. During the Korean war, I was a pre-teen at Worthington, MN. One day, the Globe had a small picture with its caption. The caption stated that someone had taken a picture of two jets dog-fighting. While the jets were visible, the primary picture was their contrails, which produced a full frontal line drawing of a human male face. The caption asserted this was the face of Christ. If the Globe's archives go back that far it can be looked up.In the 60s, a young man showed me a print he'd made of a photograph taken across a canyon during snow melting time. You could see the people he wanted to photograph there. The snow banks and melted ground produced a full frontal picture of a human male face in the style that looks like a strongly over-exposed photograph.

A matter-ist's metaphysical assumption requires him to insist they must be fakes, coincidence could not make such pictures. I can agree with the second part of that.

What anim-ists would insist I can't predict as I don't know enough about the basics of that world-view.

A mind-ist would insist that these were just another dream of the universal (but non-personal) Mind.

In dealing with the physical universe and the living universe we often run into the problem (for these who only credit the created) of functional complexity. It looks like the same would apply to the thinking universe. We do not just find Shannon information, but functional information.

The Biblical world view doesn't start with any part of creation as the First Cause, but with God.

When I see someone who believes in time and chance using logic and reason to defend his viewpoint, I'm strongly reminded of a cartoon seen in several variations: a man sits on a branch, sawing it between himself and the tree trunk .

If the universe and its contents comes from time and chance, it is not logical to use logic to succeed in it.

If the universe and its contents comes from time and chance, it is not reasonable to use reason to deal with it.

Humans use logic and reason, often distorted by the brokenness in us, to deal very successfully with the existing universe - see science and technology. ID proponents, even those who are not theists, point out this elephant in the room.

[quote=the E"]If you posit that intelligence has intervened in the formation of life, you also need to explain the mechanisms by which that happened.[/quote] Why?

geomeau wrote:ID has no proposed mechanisms for how it occurred whatsoever. None. HOW THE HELL do you perform a probability assessment of the odds of a totally undefined event happening?

These are perfect examples of the "burden of proof" logical fallacy. Of course, if the metaphysical idea that the universe must have come from time and chance is real, logic does not apply. The insistence that frequentist statistics are the correct logic to apply seems wrong to me; Bayesian statistical methods fit better.

OTOH, the improbability of functional complexity coming from time and chance does not depend on proposing another mechanism. It merely point out the inadequacy of T&C.

The use of logic and reason is one way we are made in God's image, although distorted by our rebellion. Could you honestly turn to Jesus Christ and say "I've lived as good a life as you!"?

[quote=TheE"]So according to you, the existence of highly chaotic systems like the weather means that physics doesn't work?[/quote]Weather is not chaotic in the sense meant, we know the physics. The difficulty comes with the complexity. Today, super computers are used in weather prediction. It has been found that to double the accuracy of the results, the inputs must be sixteen times as detailed. GIGO is not the only possible difficulty.

The basic metaphysical question is whether the First Cause is impersonal or personal. Known functional complexity does not argue for time and chance. GIGO

Worth reading:The Story of Reality, by Gregory Koukl

Evidence that Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell

More Evidence that Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowellWarning: these two are scholarly level, complete with thorough bibliographies.

McDowell accepted the matter-ist world view and set out to prove the Bible could not be what it claimed. Like C. S. Lewis, the results were not what he expected. Koukl's background I don't know.

It is worth noting the different futures of the world views. Matter-ists come to the heat death of the universe. The Christian world view states that we either get perfect mercy (when a debt was completely paid, the Greek word tetelestai or its abbreviation, translated as finished, was written on the contract of debt) or perfect judgement; depending whether we accept God's gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ

DDHv wrote:You are not naming one other people who still existed as a people after multiple generations out of their homeland. The usual pattern is assimilation into other peoples. The improbable fact is the Jews continuing as a people: their becoming a nation again, as is also prophesied in the Bible, is just the capstone.

So what happens if the Kurds get their own country?

An example of how the metaphysical assumption affects theories. During the Korean war, I was a pre-teen at Worthington, MN. One day, the Globe had a small picture with its caption. The caption stated that someone had taken a picture of two jets dog-fighting. While the jets were visible, the primary picture was their contrails, which produced a full frontal line drawing of a human male face. The caption asserted this was the face of Christ. If the Globe's archives go back that far it can be looked up.In the 60s, a young man showed me a print he'd made of a photograph taken across a canyon during snow melting time. You could see the people he wanted to photograph there. The snow banks and melted ground produced a full frontal picture of a human male face in the style that looks like a strongly over-exposed photograph.

A matter-ist's metaphysical assumption requires him to insist they must be fakes, coincidence could not make such pictures. I can agree with the second part of that.

Pareidolia is a marvellous thing, isn't it.

What anim-ists would insist I can't predict as I don't know enough about the basics of that world-view.

A mind-ist would insist that these were just another dream of the universal (but non-personal) Mind.

In dealing with the physical universe and the living universe we often run into the problem (for these who only credit the created) of functional complexity. It looks like the same would apply to the thinking universe. We do not just find Shannon information, but functional information.

The Biblical world view doesn't start with any part of creation as the First Cause, but with God.

When I see someone who believes in time and chance using logic and reason to defend his viewpoint, I'm strongly reminded of a cartoon seen in several variations: a man sits on a branch, sawing it between himself and the tree trunk .

And when I see your flailing attempts to turn belief in the supernatural into the logical and rational position based on nothing except your disbelief that the universe could be simpler than you imagine, I have to laugh.

If the universe and its contents comes from time and chance, it is not logical to use logic to succeed in it.

If the universe and its contents comes from time and chance, it is not reasonable to use reason to deal with it.

And what good is logic and reason when you posit that an illogical and unreasonable entity is the creator of everything?

Humans use logic and reason, often distorted by the brokenness in us, to deal very successfully with the existing universe - see science and technology. ID proponents, even those who are not theists, point out this elephant in the room.

The E wrote:If you posit that intelligence has intervened in the formation of life, you also need to explain the mechanisms by which that happened.

Why?

Because that's how science works. You form a hypothesis based on observable reality and then formulate a theory based on experimental evidence. Your hypothesis is that a god intervened in the formation of life. What's your observable reality? Have you or other IDiots found conclusive proof of godlike intervention in physical processes? Have you seen it happen?

Simply saying that God did something is an incomplete hypothesis. There's nothing to research, no experiment to be devised, that could provide conclusive evidence for it.

Thus: ID is not science.

These are perfect examples of the "burden of proof" logical fallacy. Of course, if the metaphysical idea that the universe must have come from time and chance is real, logic does not apply. The insistence that frequentist statistics are the correct logic to apply seems wrong to me; Bayesian statistical methods fit better.

No, the burden of proof is definitely on you IDiots. You do not have any evidence, you do not have a theoretical framework that offers necessary proof of your claims, and your claims are extravagant.

ID has failed over and over again to provide anything resembling scientific proof of its claims. All you have is disbelief, bad math, and a giant gaping hole where experimental approaches should be.

OTOH, the improbability of functional complexity coming from time and chance does not depend on proposing another mechanism. It merely point out the inadequacy of T&C.

The use of logic and reason is one way we are made in God's image, although distorted by our rebellion. Could you honestly turn to Jesus Christ and say "I've lived as good a life as you!"?

Yes.

The E wrote:So according to you, the existence of highly chaotic systems like the weather means that physics doesn't work?

Weather is not chaotic in the sense meant, we know the physics. The difficulty comes with the complexity. Today, super computers are used in weather prediction. It has been found that to double the accuracy of the results, the inputs must be sixteen times as detailed. GIGO is not the only possible difficulty.

Oh, I see, you're doing that thing again where you're redefining words to mean something different than what they actually mean.

Do carry on.

The basic metaphysical question is whether the First Cause is impersonal or personal. Known functional complexity does not argue for time and chance. GIGO

Speaking of Garbage....

Worth reading:The Story of Reality, by Gregory Koukl

Evidence that Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell

More Evidence that Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowellWarning: these two are scholarly level, complete with thorough bibliographies.

McDowell accepted the matter-ist world view and set out to prove the Bible could not be what it claimed. Like C. S. Lewis, the results were not what he expected. Koukl's background I don't know.

By checking McDowell's sources and consulting works of NT scholars, I was eventually able to discover that much of what McDowell presents is untrustworthy, misleading or simply incorrect. In the ensuing six months, my brother and I engaged in detailed email discussions in which we debated the McDowell's evidence. I give below a transcript of our discussions. My hope is that the detailed evidence presented here will give both Christians and non-Christians ammunition to help expose and rebut the distortions and falsehoods being promulgated by McDowell and other like-minded fundamentalists.

McDowell's book can be highly misleading to an unwary reader. He is a "compiler": He scans the literature and picks out quotes which support or seem to support the case he is trying to make, ignoring all contrary material. He is not above lifting quotes out of context and alleging they pertain to subjects they do not. He cites from individual sources selectively, omitting what doesn't support his position. He exaggerates the degree to which his sources support his claims. Presenting only supporting material to the reader prevents any nuanced discussion of controversial issues and gives the reader the misleading impression of scholarly unanimity in support of McDowell's assertions. It is only by following up on McDowell's citations and seeking out opposing scholarly literature that an unwary reader can discover McDowell's deceptiveness. Most readers have neither the time nor the inclination for such research, and many conservative Christians are glad to see apparent scholarly support for what they already "know" is true. Unfortunately for them and the unwary they seek to influence, that support is a mirage and a deception.

It is worth noting the different futures of the world views. Matter-ists come to the heat death of the universe. The Christian world view states that we either get perfect mercy (when a debt was completely paid, the Greek word tetelestai or its abbreviation, translated as finished, was written on the contract of debt) or perfect judgement; depending whether we accept God's gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ